The Ghawini al-Ashwaq fi Ma'ani al-'Ushshaq

The Kitab Ghawani al-Ashwaq fi Ma’ani- al'Ushshaq was authored by 'Abd al-Mun'ibn al-Bakka', an Egyptian author who was born in Egypt, and left to Hijaz in 980\1552. For six decades he lived there till his death in 1040\1630. During these years he wrote several books, one of them is the Kitab Ghawani- al-Ashwaq, who seems to be the first to be published from his output. The book deals with the concept of love in classical and medieval Arabic heritage. It includes much material on heavenly and profane love. It draws much on earlier books, but has is own flavor, since its author added much material from his own time and experience. The adherence to Muslim ethics is evident, and one can say that he is closer to the sufi thinking and behavior. Being written in Medina the book can be taken as a document that reflects the attitude of its people to the basic ideas concerning the concept of love and how it was reflected theoretically and in the corpus of Arabic love literature.